If you'd like to talk about it, your recent post about the genie arc you and your dnd group just finished has me really curious to hear more about it! Its sounds like it was so cool, and it's always awesome to hear about narratives where characters get to travel all over the world- especially since i know that yours is homebrew.
yes omg thank you, there's nothing i'd rather do than talk about the genie communities of my dnd game.
the party began this arc in halkifell, the hometown of an npc friend named mahety. halkifell is home to ifrit and their fire genasi kids, located on the top of a volcano (which is also a portal to the elemental plane of fire). at birth, mahety was chosen by the volcano to be the next leader of her people. she was actually out in the world before now as part of her self-discovery journey before stepping up to the leadership position officially. the time to do that is now, for many reasons, which means she has to stay in halkifell, on the other side of the continent from where the party (including her PC gf) have their home base.
so mahety's dad, an ifriti named temza, suggested the party go to the other genie communities to collect spell components in order to create a teleportation circle in halkifell. this makes it so (eventually) mahety and the party can visit each other at their leisure. temza was vague about where they needed to go and what exactly the spell components were, because that was all part of the journey (which would be important to the spell later). they were told to get:
A binding from the dao, an iron link;
Salt from the marid, in liquid sync;
A yielding from the djinn, a burden's drink.
and they were given general directions and landmarks to follow. the marid could be found submerged in the ocean to the north, at a distance of "a sunrise as the dolphin swims." the djinn could be found to the southeast in the desert, after "following the eye of the storm for one moonrise." the dao were located in the mountain range to the southwest, at "the top of the peak that looks like a bird."
i'm gonna put the rest under a readmore because uhhh. believe it or not, this got even longer lmao.
also, just as a note. genies in my world are beings made out of elemental magic + something i am abstractly referring to as Story Magic. mechanically, this means the ifrit, marid, dao and djinn are big ol' elemental bards, lol. narratively, each genie society has specific values and traditions when it comes to stories, which you can read more about here.
so the party traveled north and went into the ocean to find the marid (story value: listening to stories), who were NOT thrilled to meet the party. they had a tense encounter where they had to tell stories based on marid tradition. the trick was for the PCs to tell the marid sad stories, but they only learned that through the minigame i designed (which you can read more about here). the spell component they needed was the marid's tears (salt in liquid sync!), which calcified into pearls.
then they went to see the djinn (story value: story making), who were located on a massive cloud trapped within a cylindrical sandstorm. the storm was unnatural, caused by a djinni that had lost themself in storymaking (something that can happen to djinn if they're not careful). after proving themselves to be protagonist material, the party reenacted the story that the djinni was trapped in, in order to snap them out of it. the spell component was the djinni's sweat (a yielding! a burdenâs drink!), which calcified into fulgurite (a kind of rock that forms when sand is struck by lightning, look it up, it looks cool!).
finally, the party went to see the dao (story value: recording stories). at this point, the players had correctly deduced that they needed the dao's blood (an iron link; plus: blood, sweat and tears) but the problem was the dao do NOT share their blood with anyone. dao blood has immutable properties when combined with material plane stuff, and making earthly things permanent goes against the dao's creed.
i should have mentioned before now that different kinds of genasi have unique relationships with each genie community, and the earth genasi had ostracized themselves. they wanted to be more dao, but the dao wanted them to be patient etc etc etc. one of the genasi wanted to do a risky spell to become a dao, which backfired and he kind of lost himself. so one PC, saube, underwent a daoist carving/tattoo ritual to connect herself to the earth, where she was able to use the genasi's blood as part of the tattoo and also take some back to halkifell. this all sounds complicated when summarized like this lmao, but just trust me that it was beautiful and special and now saube is literally connected to the land of halkifell, where her gf lives and where she will live, eventually.
OKAY SO. the party got back to halkifell, and the last component / part of the spell was for them to tell their story to mahety. the ifrit story value is storytelling, and the telling of the story created the teleportation circle that will link mahety to where they are, forever. it was beautiful!!! it was a good arc actually!!!
actually in thinking about this, one of my players commented on the spoken lyricism that a certain group of ifrit/fire genasi npcs have in our game. and their speech patterns haven't been 100% conscious choices on my part, but it stems from two things. one (that i realized in the moment during the game) is obvious: this is a society mostly made up of bards, specifically storytelling bards. oration and poetry and saying beautiful things all come naturally to them and i try to embody that. but the other part that's not as obvious is that primordial in my world is based on arabic (ignan is specifically egyptian arabic). and so i lean on the lyricism and turns of phrase etc etc that is distinctly arabic. again, not super consciously, and i don't know arabic very well so it's not to say i do it as well as a fluent speaker might. but i do think that plays into it in terms of their speech patterns. anyway language is neat, dnd is neat, books are neat, I'm having a good time.
mahety's dad's full name is temza muneba haeneffy kal'mehtu and i only share this because i just realized it's maybe a little weird that i didn't have to look that up in my dm notes. i just know it. temza hasn't appeared in game and yet I've known his full, long-ass name for uhhhh over a year lmao
SuĆĄa proglaĆĄena u osam podruÄja Velike Britanije, izvor rijeke Temze suĆĄniji nego ikada
SuĆĄa proglaĆĄena u osam podruÄja Velike Britanije, izvor rijeke Temze suĆĄniji nego ikada
 Vlada Velike Britanije je sluĆŸbeno proglasila suĆĄu u osam podruÄja zemlje te najavila redukcije vode za neke dijelove dok se suoÄava sa jednim od najsuĆĄnijih razdoblja u viĆĄe od jednog stoljeÄa.
U meÄuvremenu, prema medijskim izvjeĆĄtajima, izvor rijeke Temze doĆŸivljava neviÄeni nedostatak vode.
Rijeka Temza koja teÄe kroz britansku prijestolnicu proteĆŸe se 356 kilometara preko juĆŸne Engleske, odâŠ
